Read Cody Moya’s article titled “Using Reports to Build Subscription Rates”.


Cody Moya’s article is reprinted here.

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Using Reports to Build Subscription Rates

What do you think your most powerful tool is for selling products online?

A lot of people answer “a great web site.” Others think it’s having a product that sells itself, or good testimonials from customers.

In reality, your very best tool and guarantee for success online is the repeat customer.

Businesses everywhere pour money into attracting new customers to their business ? and that’s important. New customers help a new business get established, and an established business to grow. But the real problem is that many businesspeople take their current customers for granted.

It’s like getting married. You have the excitement of the wedding, and then the honeymoon, and then all of a sudden you just don’t really notice the other partner anymore ? you take them for granted. And when the spouse up and leaves you, you feel betrayed.

Well, it’s usually your own fault if you’ve been taking them for granted. And the same thing can be said for the established customer.

Reward them! Send them frequent thank-you’s if possible, and when they haven’t bought anything from you for a while, send them a special deal ? discounts, opportunities to buy things on clearance, or anything else to get them to pull out the credit card.

But what if you don’t know who your customers are?

Of course, if someone has purchased an item from you, you have their name and contact information. But they’re not the only people you should count as customers.

The faceless people who visit your site regularly but haven’t bought anything yet are also customers, or can be converted into them much more easily than the average consumer.

Yet a lot of web businesses ignore those in-between people even more thoroughly than they ignore their own customers.

Instead of doing this, take action to get these people to give you contact information. Try offering a free report in exchange for registering with you.

Free Reports

A free report is really an informative ebook you’ve compiled from articles in your newsletters, articles from your website, and even original articles.

It’s a perfect tool to get your lurking pre-customers to come out of the shadows; these people are visiting your site for the information they’ve found there, and are always happy to get their hands on more.

What you do is advertise on your home page the free report you’ve got available. You can even write a short article or a blog entry about the report if you like.

Then you set up a download link that can only be accessed by registered site users, or by entering your email into a text field. Your customers don’t have to agree to let you email them stuff; all they need to do is let you know they exist. You should include an opt-out option next to the text field so they realize that you aren’t out to spam them.

Alternatively, you can have your customers fill out a form to have the report emailed to them. This is generally less successful; people like to have power over downloads, even if the file in either case is the same file. It is, however, a good way to make first email contact with a customer, a sort of icebreaker.

When they receive your report, they should be impressed with the quality and quantity of information available in it. Never give away worthless information.

You should always be striving to impress your customer with the level of your knowledge, the amount you care about the customer, and your generosity and honesty. All these things lead to a trusting relationship, which is the key you’ll need to seduce your customer into eventually buying things from you.

Reports as Viral Marketing

Getting people to register with you is not the only thing you can do with your report. After a reasonable amount of time has passed for people to register ? maybe a couple of months ? offer the report for free either through your website or through an article directory service. And encourage anyone who downloads it to share it with other people.

Containing your information and knowledge, a report can be a wonderful marketing tool to draw in new customers interested in the things you have to offer. And by distributing it as a viral document, you ensure it will get the broadest possible spread, and continue working for you long after you’ve moved on to other things.

You can get private label reports from brokers like www.YourOwnArticles.com .

Here For Your Success

Cody Moya

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Cody Moya writes about Article Marketing in his free 50 parts course on Article Marketing. You can sign up for his free Article Marketing Course and get additional information at his website: http://www.articlemarketingcourse.com

*IMNewswatch would like to thank Cody Moya for granting permission to reprint this article.

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